All-Ireland winning football manager remembered for his ‘fiercely competitive spirit’ and great love for his family
All-Ireland winning football manager John O’Mahony’s loves, “apart from football and politics”, included “his homeplace and the places that adopted him, especially Ballaghaderreen”, his daughter Deirdre said at his funeral Mass on Thursday.
She was speaking on Thursday afternoon at St Nathy’s Cathedral in Ballaghaderreen, Co Roscommon, following her father’s funeral Mass, which was celebrated by John’s two brothers, Fr Stephen O’Mahony and Fr Dan O’Mahony, as well as his brother-in-law, Fr Tommy Towey.
Her father grew up at Magheraboy, near Ballaghaderreen, where the O’Mahony home was the last in Mayo next to the border with Roscommon, which was marked by a stream. “He said that when he was growing up it may as well have been a 10ft wall,” she recalled. What defined him “much more than the wins, were the losses”. He would “hunker down for a few days, walk the roads around Ballagh, put in a few long days in the bog, before coming back with a plan, a strategy”, to find a way through. “At his core, John had this belief in the plan, the project, the people and in himself as well.”
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